A look at Troy’s memorial to Sept. 11

Workers have broken ground on the $25,000 memorial above and are aiming to have the monument on the Lansingburgh waterfront (map) finished in time for the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11. Thoughts on the design? (Rendering provided by city of Troy)

How is this still the design?! Sculptures, art, memorials, and other places of contemplation have the potential to significantly impact the emotions of people experiencing them. This design is an epic miss. My cousin’s 2-year-old daughter made more inspired patriotic art with glitter and glue this weekend.

Its private money, raised by some motivated community members in Troy. I know $25,000 may sound like a lot, but it’s not. It really doesn’t go far when designing a building any type of monument. If people want a memorial, that is fine with me, let them have one. It will put what is now a very ugly and unkept empty lot in Lansingburgh to use. From the rendering, it’s hard to like this, but I hope the finished product is more….well…subtle, let’s say. If you want a different design, come up with $20,000 or so and I bet they will let you pick whatever design you like!

Unless you are willing to hold a design competition and build it with volunteer labor, memorial projects are quite expensive if done properly. This raises the question: why do it unless you can do it properly? The uninspired design above is the result when you under invest in design and build something “just to have it”. A proper memorial would cost easily 100k. Anything less than this and you get a third grade attempt with the value engineering seen above.

@RPIguy – I’m not 100% sure of the specifics, but, I believe this is an volunteer project. Which is why the design looks so bad. I would have to disagree with the suggestion of a design competition, since that would mean designers and non-designers submitting ideas and not being compensated, and who exactly would “judge” and pick the “winner?”

I would say the city of Troy should’ve made the project known to all the local architects and design firms. I’m sure a group of patriotic talent would’ve donated their time, talent and energy for this project. And perhaps tax dollars allocated to pick up the balance for labor? If only.